Communication oriented organizational modeling

Abstract

Modeling of organizations currently has a strong focus on the business process. In contrast to e.g. data modeling, process modeling tries to provide a clear understanding of the whole business process without giving attention to the current organizational structure. Not only because of efforts in the area of total quality management, continuous improvement and business process engineering, it is possible to observe this shift. More important are developments in the direction of new organizational forms (i.e. networked organizations) and hence the coordination of activities.In this paper the DEMO modeling approach is presented. The approach entails a framework with several models incorporated in a methodology. Primary aim of the method is to provide insight in the business process, combining the notions of action, information and communication.The DEMO approach is founded in the Language Action Perspective (Winograd and Flores, 1986). This view on organizations strongly opposes the mechanical way in which many information system analysis and development methods approach organizations. Important insights from the original impetus by Flores and Ludlow (1980) stimulated many research groups around the world to incorporate the Speech Act theory (Searle, 1969) in their methods and tools.The methodology DEMO (Dynamic Essential Modeling nf Organizations) has been described and reported upon several times (Dietz, 1992; 1994a; 1994b). Its practical value has been demonstrated for a few small scale application domains like in (van der Rijst and Dietz, 1993; van Reijswoud and van der Rijst, 1995), and recently in a large scale project (Jansen and Poot, 1996) as well.The major motivation behind the development of DEMO was the strongly felt need for information systems analysts to have a theory about organizations (and, by way of analogy, about discrete dynamic systems in general) that is only and purely based on the role of information, taken in a very general sense. Having such a theory at one's disposal would make it possible to understand organizations in a new and original way.The theory would be independent of other theories, in particular the economic theories about organizations, like the Value Chain Theory (Porter, 1985), or the Transaction Cost Theory (1985). It would have its own value and just be complementary to those other theories. Because of this property, DEMO is most valuable for providing an original informatical contribution to Business Process Redesign and Reengineering, next to and in harmony with contributions from other disciplines, e.g. the economically founded discipline of business administration. The core concepts are discussed in the next sections.